Lucia returned at midnight, slipping through the door like a shadow. Her elegant evening gown, a deep emerald silk, looked pristine, but the woman wearing it was anything but.

  "How was your night?" Clive asked, setting aside his sketchbook.

  "Insufferable," she replied, “hours of forced smiles and diplomatic conversation.”

  She leaned against the closed door for a moment, her eyes closed, before pushing herself upright with visible effort. The motion caused her to sway precariously, and she reached out with one hand to steady herself against the wall.

  Clive crossed the room quickly, offering his arm for support. Up close, he detected the smell of wine on her breath. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes slightly unfocused as they struggled to settle on his face.

  "The Gallantines," she said, "brought their entire extended family." She accepted his help to the chair, collapsing into it with less grace than usual. A hairpin slipped from her loosening hair, clinking against the stone floor. "And their wine cellar. Father kept insisting I toast with Markus. Over and over and over."

  Clive poured a cup of water. "Here, have something to drink."

  Lucia waved it away, nearly knocking the cup from his hand. "No more drinks. Had plenty." She laughed. "All of them with opinions about the curse, the town, and most importantly,"her voice took on a mocking tone, "what a young lady of my station should be doing with her time."

  She kicked off her silk slippers with uncoordinated movements, revealing blistered feet. "Markus cornered me on the balcony after my sixth glass of Pinot Noir. Or was it eighth? He found my 'peculiar fascination with potions' charming. As if my life's work is some quaint hobby to be tolerated by a future husband."

  "And what did you tell him?" Clive asked.

  "I should have told him to jump off that balcony," Lucia gave a bitter laugh, then hiccupped. "But instead, I smiled and thanked him for his 'understanding.' My father paraded me around like prize livestock, listing my accomplishments in the most marriageable light possible."

  She mimicked her father's authoritative tone: "'My daughter studied at the Royal Academy for two years. She speaks three languages. Her mother came from the Silverhaven line.'"

  She reached for a nearby bottle of wine on her workbench and took a long swig directly from it. "Not once did he mention my work. Not once."

  Clive intercepted the bottle before she could take another swig, replacing it with another cup of water. "I think you've had enough for one night."

  “You’re right.” She took a sip of water and laid her head back against the chair.

  After a moment of rest, she continued, "Three more people were turned to stone today. Did you hear? A fisherman and his two sons, found next to their boat this morning."

  "I heard," Clive nodded gravely. "The town crier passed by around sunset.”

  Her eyes met Clive's, suddenly fierce with renewed determination. "I can't leave Marblehaven, Clive. Not to become some shipping magnate's decorative wife. Not when I'm so close to understanding the curse."

  "The stone curse. Can you really cure it?" Clive asked. Despite her intoxicated state, he could see her mind working behind those wine-hazed eyes.

  "Come with me," Lucia answered. She reached for a lantern hanging by the door, her movements became steadier as scientific inquiry burned away the alcohol's fog.

  She led Clive to a narrow door at the rear of the laboratory that he hadn't noticed before. It opened to reveal a steep stone staircase descending into darkness. The air that rose to meet them was cool and damp, carrying the mineral scent of underground spaces.

  "Mind your head," she cautioned as they made their way down the worn steps.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Lucia paused before another door, this one reinforced with bands of iron. She produced a heavy key from a chain around her neck, concealed beneath her gown. The lock yielded with a reluctant groan of metal.

  "What I'm about to show you, Clive," she said, "is something I've shared with no one else. Not my father, not the town council, not even the church. Because they wouldn't understand. They'd stop me."

  She pushed open the door. The cellar was spacious, carved from the rock beneath Marblehaven. Moisture beaded on the stone wall and the room smelled of mineral mixed with alchemical reagents. But it wasn't the architecture that caught his attention.

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  It was the statues.

  Three stone figures stood in the center of the room. Around them, Lucia had assembled a research laboratory. Tables laden with instruments surrounded the statues. Charts covered the walls, detailing etheric compositions, reaction formulas, and anatomical diagrams. Shelves held dozens of labeled samples in glass containers—fragments of stone, powders, liquids of various colors.

  "You've been... collecting victims?"

  "Studying… Trying to save." Lucia moved to the nearest figure. "This is Federick, my father's former bookkeeper. I watched him turn to stone, limb by limb." She touched his stone cheek with tenderness. "His wife begged me to help when the Saintess couldn't."

  The second statue was a middle-aged woman clutching what appeared to be a market basket. "Tilda. She sold herbs in the town square." And the third, a child, caught in a running stance. "Emil, the baker's son."

  She led Clive to a table where a peculiar apparatus stood, a complex arrangement of crystals, metals, and glass lenses that gleamed in the lantern light. "This is an etheric resonator. It allows those without natural sight to perceive the elemental composition of matter."

  She gestured for him to look through the primary lens.

  Clive bent to peer through the lens, but initially saw only Lucia as she positioned herself in front of the apparatus. Through the lens, her form transformed into a swirling mosaic of colors: earthy brown pulsing at her core, ribbons of icy blue and fiery red intertwining through her limbs, misty white air element surrounding her like an aura, and most striking of all, the perfect balance of golden light and deep purple darkness dancing in harmonious opposition throughout her being.

  "The human body is made of six elements," Lucia explained. "Earth, ice, fire, air, light, and darkness. In perfect balance, they create life. Of the six elements, they can be further divided into two groups: the active elements—fire, air, and darkness—which provide dynamism and change; and the passive elements—earth, ice, and light—which provide structure and permanence."

  Then Lucia stepped aside and placed a piece of ordinary stone in front of the lens. The vibrant symphony of colors diminished dramatically, showing predominantly browns and whites with mere threads of the other elements woven sparsely throughout.

  "Natural stone has an overabundance of the passive elements; however, it still contains a respectable amount of each element," Lucia explained, tracing the faint lines of fire and darkness that threaded through the sample. "Every substance in nature maintains at least some elemental balance, even if heavily weighted toward one category."

  She carefully removed the sample and gestured toward Federick, the petrified bookkeeper. "But these victims..." Her voice trailed off, compelling Clive to look through the lens at the transformed human.

  What he saw made him recoil. Unlike the harmonious blend in Lucia or even the predominant but balanced mixture in natural stone, Federick's form blazed with an overwhelming, almost painful golden radiance. The light element saturated every part of him, pulsing with intensity. There was no sign of the purple darkness element and only faint traces of the other elements.

  "The stone curse doesn't just physically transform the body," Lucia said. "It fundamentally alters the elemental balance. They're overwhelmed with the light element and drained of the dark element."

  Clive pulled back from the lens, blinking away the afterimage of that unnatural golden blaze. "What does this mean... The Devil’s curse floods their victims with light?” He shook his head in disbelief. That doesn’t sound right. Light is supposed to be purifying, healing. How could too much light be harmful?"

  "I don’t know…" Lucia said grimly. "Perhaps the Devil drains the darkness from his prey, leaving only light behind. Or perhaps light itself becomes corrupted when it exists without its natural counterbalance."

  She guided Clive to a locked cabinet in the corner of the cellar. She opened it, revealing a series of small vials containing a viscous black liquid. "I've been experimenting with darkness element extracts, trying to restore the balance."

  "Using darkness to cure the devil's curse," Clive commented. "How ironic. The town prays to the God of Light for salvation while the cure might lie in the very element they've been taught to fear."

  Lucia's shoulders tensed as she carefully lifted one of the vials. "You see now why I've been keeping this research quiet. If word got out, it could lead to troubling speculation." Her voice lowered further. "The Church would burn me as a heretic for proclaiming darkness as a cure. That is why no one can know. Not until we have proof."

  "What now? How has your cure been progressing?"

  "It's not quite working yet," Lucia admitted, carefully returning the vial to the cabinet. "The darkness extracts I've used have not been able to integrate well into the statues. They remain on the surface, refusing to penetrate the stone. But there's something I would like to try. The extract of a midnight blossom."

  “Midnight blossom?”

  "It's a rare flower that blooms only at midnight in the darkest regions of the wild on the days after a full moon. Its petals contain the purest natural concentration of the darkness element found in any plant."

  She moved to a large calendar on the wall, where lunar cycles were carefully tracked in red ink. "The next full moon is about two weeks away." Her finger traced a path on a map pinned beside the calendar. "There's a grove in the Shadowfen, about five day's journey north of Marblehaven, where midnight blossoms have been reported. Few venture there, it’s located in the twilight zone, the contested lands between San’Dioral and Vandiel. The Demon King’s influence is strongest there."

  Lucia turned to face Clive directly. "If we could harvest even a single bloom, I might be able to create an extract powerful enough to penetrate the stone and restore elemental balance. It would be dangerous. The Shadowfen is home to creatures that thrive in darkness."

  Her gaze drifted to the petrified figures—Federick, Tilda, and little Emil. "But if we succeed, we could save them. We could save everyone." She held out her hand to Clive, "How about it, Clive? Shall we find it?"

  "Let's do it," he said, clasping Lucia's outstretched hand. "After all, what kind of artist would I be if I shied away from the darkest colors on the palette?"

  In the lantern light, their joined hands cast a single shadow on the wall.

  [New Quest: Bloom in Darkness]

  Main Objective: Obtain a midnight blossom

  Reward: 3 Certainty Point

  When dawn refuses to yield to dusk, the world burns white and still.

  -The Demon King